Dennis Lehane, Pen and Podium, and Noir

by Dan Manzanares

A couple of weeks ago, I attended the premiere of The Denver Post's 2014-15 Pen & Podium series. The program featured noir and crime fiction author, Dennis Lehane. I went because ever since taking workshops with Lighthouse's noir guru, Benjamin Whitmer (Cry Father), I've taken to the genre. I took my wife, she has been learning about noir as well due to my being bananas over it, my notebook, and some cash to buy a Lehane book. In the dark Mezzanine section of the Newman Center I laughed with my wife at Lehane's jokes, cavorted quietly with some Lighthousers unexpectedly sitting next to us, and took notes. Lines whose wavy shapes I had to concentrate on to decipher later that night.

Before I drop some of Lehane's noirish knowledge, here's a side note: Lehane didn't read from any of his books--Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, among others, or from his latest, The Drop. And I must say, I truly appreciated that decision. Not because I wouldn't have enjoyed it. But rather, I took the gesture, or lack of one, to mean that he wasn't there to oversell us. Just like being on a first date, where the person gives a bullet list about why she or he was made for you, instead of letting the date unfold, for good or bad, Lehane unfolded story after story about his life and work. Take it or leave it. Buy his books, don't buy his books. This weaving of tales was refreshing. And believe me, I know the adage Love the art, not the artist. But I'll be damned if when I picked up and read The Drop and noted all the scenes Lehane spoke of that he had mined from his life that it didn't tickle me, and make me believe that my connection to the man and his art went beyond one of lecturer-audience member.

So, here are a few notes on writing I thought I'd offer from the evening, some general, others pointedly noir:

Foremost, Lehane grew up in a situation where storytelling was bloodsport. If your story didn't capture your audience immediately (fellow barflies in this case), or if it wasn't periodically funny even inside all its tragedy, you and your story were told, not so nicely as this, to put a sock in it.

But what do you do then with material from the everyday--material that everyone in Lehane's neighborhood bars was working with, including Lehane, stories that probably everyone already knew? Lehane says as a writer he learned 'how to take the mundane and make it mythic'.

Lehane writes only the ideas he falls in love with.

These two might be a noir thing or not, you decide, but he also writes about situations he doesn't want to know the answers to. This is a scary space to work in, but it allows him to be surprised by his characters, even when the surprises are horrifying. And, he never writes for or about the truth, only his characters relationship to it.

On violence, Lehane says that it endlessly perpetuates. And it is that concept which focuses his stories.

As far as literary influences go, Lehane mentioned many, but the one that caught my attention was the author Richard Price and his 1974 novel about a teenage gang that comes to age in the 1960s Bronx titled The Wanderers.

And it is with that one I'll continue.

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